LED panel replicates blue sky indoors

A nanoparticle LED panel designed by Paolo di Trapani imitates the Earth’s atmosphere to deliver a sunny sky to your room, no matter what the weather outside.

Trapani teamed up with a group from Italy’s University of Insubria to develop a polymer screen coated in titanium dioxide nanoparticles.

When a white LED is placed behind the screen, the window is able to reproduce a process known as Rayleigh scattering where light particles are separated into ‘blue’ sky and ‘yellow’ sun.

The screen is being manufactured under the name CoeLux and has been suggested on the product website for a number of applications, including buildings located in polluted cities, windowless restaurants or workspaces and dimly homes.

The window panel can also be programmed to imitate sunlight at different latitudes – a vertical, high-contrast light for the tropics, a medium balanced Mediterranean hue, as well as a warmer, more lateral glow to represent the Nordic sun.